Over the last four decades of his life, President Gerald Ford insisted there was no evidence anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

That's why Ford's friends, family and biographers are casting doubt on a book publisher's claim that in his last days the president confided that Oswald did not act alone and that the CIA destroyed documents about Kennedy's murder.

Courtesy PhotoA FlatSigned Press edition of the Warren Commission report with a foreword and autograph by Gerald R. Ford goes for up to $889.

Nashville publisher Tim Miller is touting the book as "President Gerald R. Ford's final memoir." That is feeding the conspiracy frenzy that has lingered since Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas in 1963, particularly because Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination.

"Sounds like someone's trying to sell some books," Steven Ford, the late president's son, said during a recent visit to Grand Rapids. "I've sat around the dinner table with Dad many times, and he'd be the first to tell you they couldn't rule out a conspiracy, but there was no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone."

Even so, in press releases and interviews on network news programs and radio talk shows, Miller insisted Ford knew more than he publicly stated about Kennedy's death.

"Miller is ready to disclose that the late president told him that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone," promises one press release from his FlatSigned Press. It also said Miller described Ford as "one of the most affable men he's ever met," although he recently conceded he and Ford never met face to face.

The extent of Miller's relationship with Ford remains unclear. Miller said he spoke with Ford on the telephone more than once and fewer than six times. Ford signed a contract to write a foreword to the book, he said, which is a reprint of the 44-year-old Warren Commission report.

FlatSigned's Web site quotes Time magazine as saying the book "should become one of the best-thumbed books since the Bible" and Newsweek raving "the pages crackle with the electricity of human feeling." But those reviews were published in 1964 about the original Warren Commission report, not about Miller's book.

"It's really a memoir," Miller said. "It ended up being Gerald Ford's last book. He approved every word."

Miller claimed he and Ford "had heated exchanges over what should be included in the book" and that Ford insisted on several deletions.

"He was upset," Miller said. "He cursed. I was a little taken aback."

Penny Circle, Ford's chief of staff, confirmed the former president was involved with Miller and that she signed a certificate verifying Ford autographed limited-edition copies. Miller is selling those 3,000 leather-bound copies under the title "President John F. Kennedy: Assassination Report of the Warren Commission" for as much as $889 each. Paperback copies, titled "A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission," sell for $17.95.

Circle declined further comment, saying, "Someone else is looking at it for me." While she would not say who, a Ford family confidant said it is an attorney.

'A combination of my words'

Miller said Circle called him recently to complain about how he was promoting the book. A Dec. 20 press release issued for his company misquoted him, he claimed, when it said, "Miller says Ford conceded that Oswald did not act alone."

"That's a combination of my words, not Ford's words," Miller said, but he added: "I believe Oswald did not act alone."

Tampa publicist Glenn Selig said he wrote the press release, based on information provided by Miller. "I think Tim explained that was his interpretation of what Ford said," Selig said. "I would go with whatever Tim explained to you."

As for his claim that Ford said the CIA destroyed records in the Kennedy assassination, Miller pointed to a paragraph in the foreword purportedly written by Ford. But that paragraph discusses a CIA plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.

When asked about the assassination, the Ford Library in Ann Arbor still sends out copies of a statement signed by Ford endorsing the Warren Commission's conclusions:.

"In 1964, the Warren Commission unanimously decided, 1) Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin, and, 2) The Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic," the statement says.

"As a member of the Commission, I endorsed those conclusions in 1964 and fully agree now as the sole surviving Commission member."

Notwithstanding that disclaimer, a press release issued by FlatSigned Press promises, "In what will surely reignite the conspiracy debate, Miller is ready and willing to disclose what Ford told him in private about the Kennedy assassination and what else the late president told him in the months before he died."

In his 1979 autobiography "A Time to Heal," Ford called allegations of government complicity and cover-up in Kennedy's death "nonsense! There was no complicity on the part of the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Dallas police or any other state or federal agency. So far as foreign conspiracy is concerned, nothing I have learned in the years since then would prompt me to change any of the major conclusions we reached."

Talking with Liddy, Imus

In an interview with radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy, Miller said, "Gerald Ford always insisted Oswald was the only shooter, but not that he acted alone. When you read what his thoughts were, it's pretty amazing.

In January, Miller sued Don Imus, Infinity Broadcasting and CBS Radio for $4 million over remarks the shock jock made about the book, including that it was "cheesy."

"Now that ol' President Ford has flatlined, buy your piece of American history at FlatSigned.com," Imus said.

Miller responded: "This book was chosen by the president to be part of his legacy, a part of his life surviving beyond his death. Don Imus damaged that legacy by using his considerable influence over the book-buying public to cast a very negative and inaccurate light on the book."

"Fox and Friends," the morning program on the Fox News channel, introduced a recent interview with Miller by saying the book contains "some explosive new details about that fateful day."

"This book actually authored by Gerald Ford finally proves once and for all the CIA -- our government -- did destroy documents and cover up many facts that day in Dallas," Miller asserted on the Fox program.

The Fox interviewers did not challenge him on that point.

Those close to Ford said it is inconceivable he would have disclosed such a dramatic change of mind to a little-known publisher. Several who interviewed Ford in recent years, including Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University, and Press Editor Mike Lloyd, said he never swayed from his insistence there was no evidence of a conspiracy.

"President Ford was very explicit to me that he believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone," said Thomas DeFrank, author of the new Ford biography "Tell it When I'm Gone."

"He even told me he became more convinced of that over time."

James Cannon, another Ford biographer and his former domestic policy adviser, said: "It's inconceivable to me that President Ford changed his mind about the Warren Commission. It can't be true."

Besides, he said, Ford "talked to people he knew. ... The idea he would talk to a stranger is inconceivable."

Miller expressed surprise about the doubters.

"I can't believe anybody would call it a hoax," he said. He vowed to publish the full manuscript of the forward, including sections he said Ford insisted on deleting.

The revised version, he said, will include "who I think killed JFK, if they don't kill me first."